Spare the Robot, Spoil the Technorganic
by katamariape
Summary: A co-authored piece with Artisan Brown. When Amalia went to drop off some papers at Sumdac towers, she never thought she'd become 5 year old Sari Sumdac's babysitter. Now it's three years later and things are going pretty- Wait where did Sari go!
1. Chapter 1

**Author Notes:**Woo! I know I probably shouldn't be starting a new fic with my current two ongoing, but the plot bunnies assaulted me quite violently. Thanks so much to Artisan Brown who will be co-authoring this piece with me whose work helped inspire me to start writing fanfiction. This is my first TFA fic, but I hope it doesn't show. Please remember to R&R!

**Rating:**T

**

* * *

Prologue  
Boot Sequence**

_

* * *

Let's see, if the limit is zero and x is equal to two then…_

"Dammit, not now!"

The interruption from this calculus homework was certainly something Amalia didn't need. This assignment was going to be late if she didn't get her rear in gear. So, upon hearing her Lise's swears echoing through the spacious hall of their house, she – too – swore inaudibly. Amalia groaned, her forehead making contact with her desk.

She swung around to face the door, not sure if this was worth getting up for.

Amalia had dirty blond hair currently tied back in a ponytail to prevent her from playing with it too much. Her brown eyes crossed over her unnaturally tidy room, and out to the doorway. She didn't feel like getting up, for she knew that if she did, she probably wouldn't come back. But if she didn't, the curiosity would kill her. When another swear word reached her ears, she stood up and followed it to the very end of the hallway. The door to her mother's office was cracked open.

She'd seen horror movies like this.

Amalia peeked into the room – hesitantly, but determined – to see Lise, a lanky woman of about fifty, pulverizing her keyboard.

"C'mon, you piece of shit!" Lise hollered.

"Hey, Lise?"

The woman turned around in shock, calming when she saw who it was. "Oh…hello, honey. I didn't hear you come in."

Amalia smirked and leaned against the doorframe. "You know, for someone always telling me not to curse, you sure do it a lot when you think you're alone."

Her mother rolled her eyes as she turned back to her desk. "Yes, well, you know what they say 'Do as I say, not as I do.' Besides, I wouldn't be cursing if it wasn't for this fuuuu…reaking computer!"

"Wow, smooth recovery, Lise."

Lise waved her hand dismissively. "Hush, dear, now, do you have any idea how to fix this thing?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake, again? Lise, that computer's over ten years old now; it's starting to cost more to keep it working than buying a new top of the line model."

"That doesn't help me."

Amalia crossed her arms. "Then what is it?"

"It refuses to connect to the internet, so I can't send Professor Sumdac the reports on the company's budget for next year."

"Please, I've met him at some of those stupid company parties," scoffed Amalia. "He doesn't care one bit about that stuff. Sumdac is an inventor, not a businessman."

"Yes, but rules are rules." The mid-age woman was silent for a few moments. "Tell you what. You're going out shopping later, right?"

"Yeah, Val and I are going to the mall."

"Well," Lise picked a file up from off her desk, "it would be very helpful if you dropped these files off at the Sumdac building on your way there."

"...Ten bucks."

"Help a withering old woman for a change, dearest."

Lise waved the file expectantly in front of her daughter's flat expression. Finally, Amalia snatched it.

"Fine, but you owe me."

As the teenager left the room Lise sat down at her desk and sighed. "Why can't she just call me Mom? _Why_? Is it because I didn't read all the way through that child psychology book?"

* * *

Amalia slammed the car door shut behind her and looked at the imposing building in front of her.

_Sumdac Tower._

She never liked coming here. She didn't even like looking at it. It was tall and ugly, and oddly resembled a sparkplug. Amalia often wondered the same thing whenever she headed through its interior; she wanted to know what idiot designed this place and what exactly were they on. But despite how she personally felt about its design, it had a sort of lazy appeal to it. Perhaps Sumdac's view of the world rubbed off on it. Like Amalia had noted on more than one occasion, he was no businessman. He liked fixing things.

She entered the lobby, the titanic automatic doors closing behind her. (Amalia wondered why those things to be so big. Were they expecting giants to come through or something?) Dragging her feet, she made her way over to the unattended reception desk.

Empty. Amalia leaned over the counter. "Hello?"

She checked the counter to see if there was some sort of bell to get someone's attention; there was none.

"Hey, anybody home?!" she shouted this time. All of the sudden, a figure popped up from behind the counter. Amalia flew backwards, dropping the file.

"H-He-Hello therrrrree…"

Amalia growled as she realized what it was. The robotic secretary was obviously malfunctioning; aside from the robot's aphasia, it kept on twitch spasmodically and occasionally let out stray sparks.

"Stupid robot," Amalia muttered. She did not need this delay. _Honestly, I get that Sumdac's trying to set an example, but there are some jobs that just aren't meant for robots._

Amalia stood back up and looked around for any other presence besides that of the broken receptionist. Preferably someone soft, fleshy, and with a brain not made of metal. "Hello?! Anybody?!"

There only answer was silence. _You'd think there would be more people here, even if it is Memorial Day. Security or something._

When a minute had passed without anyone entering the lobby, Amalia decided she might as well take initiative. _The elevators better not be broken too._

_

* * *

Oh my, this isn't good._

Isaac Sumdac leaned feverishly over his desk, fidgeting with various electronic circuits and other minutiae that to most would seem like a pile of junk. But they were Isaac's bread and butter.

_I told them to get me 30 ohm resistors. These are obviously 300 ohm!_ He inwardly seethed. He sighed, slouching back in his chair and massaging his temples. _I need to hurry up, I told the board that I'd have something new and we're meeting in less than two weeks._

"Hello?"

Isaac sat up quickly. _That didn't sound like Sari._

"HELLO?!"

Isaac hurried from his office, the door sealing behind him. He scanned the hallway for the source of the voice, half-expecting to see some murderous madman or perhaps Sari about to try to pull a fast one on him. Back towards the end of the hall he could see the shadow of a person around the corner.

"Sari, is that you?!" he called

The person came around the corner. It was not Sari as Isaac had hoped, but instead a vaguely familiar looking young woman.

"Hi there, Professor Sumdac, did you know that your receptionist robot is broken?" she greeted him with a dull familiarity that indicated he should know her.

As hard as he tried Isaac couldn't put a name to her face. "Um, excuse me, but do I know you, young lady."

The girl looked momentarily surprised. "Oh, well it was only twice at those parties so I guess you wouldn't remember me. I'm Amalia Vos."

Isaac's mouth hung open rather stupidly.

"…Lise's daughter."

Isaac smiled and then chuckled. "Oh yes, now I remember, last year's unveiling of the new security bot line. Powell spilt his champagne on you if I recall."

"Oh yeah, that party was a _blast_."

Isaac's chuckling slowly died down. He coughed to clear his throat and continued. "So what are you doing here anyway, Ms. Vos? And why isn't someone from security accompanying you?"

"Um, well it's Memorial Day, so I guess they have vacation or something..."

"Memorial Day? Oh my, that was today? I completely forgot..."

Amalia shrugged. "Well it's not that huge of a holiday, so I guess that happens. Anyway I was sent here to give you these." She handed a manila folder filled with papers to Isaac. "My mom's computer is down so she couldn't e-mail them to you."

Isaac looked down at the file. "Umm, what is it exactly?"

"The company budget, I think. Something along those lines anyway."

Before Isaac could ask further he was interrupted.

"Dad?"

Isaac looked behind Amalia to see his daughter of five. Sari briefly glanced at Amalia, then turned back at her father.

"Sari?" Isaac blinked. "What are you doing out of your room? Shouldn't you be in lessons?"

"_Dad_…" Sari moaned, stretching out the word. "It's almost 5'o clock. I finished with Tutor Bot more than an hour ago. I'm hungry!" Sari looked at Amalia and pointed. "Who are you?"

"Sari you know dinner's at 5:30, and it's rude to point." Isaac reprimanded. "This is Amalia. She's the daughter of one of the board members."

Amalia smiled at the young girl. "Nice to meet you, Sari."

Sari stared at Amalia for a few seconds, disinterested, before returning her attention to Isaac. "But Dad! I'm hungry now!"

"Sari, you'll have to wai -"

"NO! I'm hungry now!"

Isaac sighed. "I… suppose we could have dinner a little early today. Go wait upstairs, Sari. I'll be up in a few minutes."

Sari immediately switched out of her grumpy mood to a large smile. The young girl skipped back down the hallway until she was out of both of their sight.

Isaac massaged his temples, the beginnings of a migraine starting to form. "Oh Sari, what am I supposed to do with you?"

Amalia was still looking down the hall where Sari had disappeared. "…Kids aren't your cup of tea?"

"No, I suppose not…Although the fact that I have to run a multinational corporation probably attributes to that somewhat."

"What about her mother?"

"Sari's…mother?" Isaac started to laugh in a way that sounded a lot like crying.

"Umm…Wow, I guess you don't like to talk about that huh? Sorry."

"No, not particularly..."

"Well what about babysitters?"

"Again, I'm the head of a multinational corporation, I can't really trust anyone with that responsibility without the risk of them trying to kidnap and ransom her...Or worse, the other way around…"

Amalia nodded. "Yeah, I guess so. That's what all those parents basically said when they hired me."

Isaac looked up from his depressed slump. "Pardon?"

Amalia was lost for a second. "Huh? Oh yeah! Um, for the last two years some of my neighbors hired me to baby-sit their kids when they went out. We live in a neighborhood where a lot of the higher ups in your company live. So I guess they trusted me because my mom worked for the same company as them."

"Really, now?" Isaac was very intrigued. "So…would you say you were good with children?"

"Well, yeah. I mean you'd have to be to not _strangle_ some of those spoiled…" She trailed off as a look of shock came to her face. "…Wait, I wasn't volunteering!"

* * *

Sari let her legs swing under the chair as she watched the seconds on the clock slowly tic by. She was hungry. Worse, she was crabby. Having had to endure the afternoon listening to Tutor Bot drone on and on about stuff that was _way_ out of her league; Sari was in the mood to play. But she couldn't concentrate on playing when she was so hungry! She just hoped that her father would have the sense to get take-out instead of making a hastily prepared meal.

Better yet, she wished she could go out to the Burger Bot herself and grab something to eat. But there were two problems with that. One: she didn't have any money. Two: she was five. Any attempts to get food for herself wouldn't end well. Unless she tried acting cute…

_Sari look back at the clock. Blast it, that lapse in thought hadn't made time pass more quickly.__When's dad getting here?_

At the sound of the doors sliding open, the red haired girl looked up with a hopeful smile.

"What are we having, Dad?"

Isaac smiled kindly. "Well Sari, I was figuring we should go out."

"Really?!" Sari exclaimed. Perhaps her luck was changing.

"Yes, although I will have to invite Mrs. Vos."

Sari tilted her head in confusion. "That teenager? Why?"

Isaac beamed, a rare sight for Sari. She vaguely tried to recall where she'd left her camera. "Well, I figured we should discuss terms."

"…About what?"

Isaac motioned towards the door. "Sari, meet your new babysitter."

Amalia walked in slowly, waving at Sari with a forced smile on her face.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author Notes:**All righty then, the fic starts in true form here. This will essentially be a parallel story to the canon of Transformers: Animated becoming an AU later down the line that will follow Amalia my OC, one of Brown's OC's, Stance; and another OC I plan on introducing next chapter. PM me for any questions and please R&R!

**Chapter 1  
Collapse**

**3 YEARS LATER**

_It's 7 o' clock._

Amalia always hated the number seven; she wasn't sure why. The way she saw it, the number seven was jinxed. One time - she must've been twelve or thirteen - she was locked in the janitor's closet at school until precisely seven at night. Then she stumbled home to find that her mom hadn't even noticed her absence. So, since then, Amalia had been sure to avoid the number seven whenever possible, no matter how irrational it sounded to other people. But it was seven o'clock in the morning, and sadly she knew exactly what that meant. _The humanity_. Yes, if she could get out of it, she would. But she couldn't. So she was stuck facing the number seven.

It was also a matter of her "internal alarm clock." Before she went to bed each night, Amalia told herself what time she had to get up at. This really was her own fault. Regardless of how much sleep she'd gotten, she had to face today's trials and errors. Amalia slowly rose out of her stiff bed. She sat upright, quickly waking her brain up and convincing her legs that it was time to get up and move around.

The young woman - dressed in oversized pajama pants and a shirt that said "kiss me" - trudged across her extremely sloppy dorm room floor. She took care not to trip over the clothes, textbooks, and the occasional scrap of food that belonged to both her and her roommate.

_Why couldn't I have gotten one of those anal-retentive neat roommates?_

Unfortunately for her, and for the whole dorm (as the smell was overpowering), not only was Chelsea a worse slob than her, the University of Michigan didn't allow automatons of _any_kind since some _assholes_used theirs to cheat on finals. So no help would come from that direction either. Unless there really was some higher power that could just snap their fingers and clean up this mess.

Because Amalia knew that it really would take a god to clean this up.

She moaned as she made her way down the hall, and shut the door behind her as she entered the dorm bathroom. _Why did I have to think about finals? The damn things are in only two months now, and I'm barely hanging on as it is._

The 20 year old looked up at a mirror, spying a young woman on the other side worthy of being Medea's daughter. A young woman with frizzled and knotted blond hair, dark circles under her brown eyes, and stress acne dotting her greasy forehead.

_I hate college._

She sighed as she began her morning routine with brushing her teeth thoroughly.

_Okay then, what's today's schedule? Classes today are eight to twelve, then I gotta hop on the express and go watch Sari until six, and then I have to get back here in time for my last class at seven._

30 minutes later she emerged from the bathroom, clean as a...well it was a shared bathroom of a college dorm so one couldn't exactly call her _clean_, but she was clean_er_than before. A little. At least she no longer reeked of the socks Chelsea had forgotten to wash that were currently molding underneath her bed. (What were they doing under _her _bed? The least Chelsea could do was keep her mess on her side of the room.)

Amalia stretched out her stiff limbs as she made her way back to her room to grab her assorted text and notebooks needed for her classes.

_Okay, let's see. I got my Trig. stuff, Intro to Mech. stuff, and my lab stuff. _She quickly stuffed all her books into her bag before making her way downstairs for a quick breakfast at the cafeteria. _You can do this. Mondays suck but they're simple and organized. Nothing unexpected._

In retrospect, Amalia realized that she had _really_jinxed herself.

By the time Amalia managed to get to the Sumdac facilities, she smelled trouble. Heck, she _was_ in trouble. Her professors had decided to pile a whole load of homework on her, right when she _didn't_ need it. As if exams weren't keeping her awake at night. As if she didn't have a social life. Amalia had even considered quitting her babysitting gig, though that would prove to slow her down as time went on. She needed the money. She liked Sari...Well enough, that is. All in all, babysitting brought more positives than negatives.

However, Sari had already run away from Tutorbot. Interrogating Tutorbot didn't do anything. (It rarely did.) Apparently Sari had run away somewhere, but the closest thing Amalia had come to finding Sari was a group of kids currently touring the facility. The hall seemed to swell in their presence. Amalia supposed she should be relieved that there didn't appear to be anything dangerous nearby. Then she heard the voice of Professor Sumdac rising above their excited screams.

"Everybody - everybody, please settle down, and we'll start the tour," Professor Sumdac urged. The children weren't paying attention to him.

Amalia took this opportunity to sneak up on him from behind. "Hi, Professor."

Professor Sumdac jumped a good five feet in the air and swung around. "Oh...Oh, hello, Amalia, I would like to - please do not touch that! I would like to talk, however I have a tour to - would you please put that down, young man?"

"Where's Sari?" asked Amalia.

"She's with Tutorbot."

"No, she isn't."

"She isn't?"

"If she was with Tutorbot, I wouldn't be standing here asking where she is."

"Well, uh..." It was clear that Professor Sumdac didn't know what to say or do at this point, his attention torn between the school children and his own, missing child. "Well, uh, she is probably wandering around the facility. I'm sure she'll show -"

"SPARKPLUG!"

_Bingo_, thought Amalia.

Cutting through the mass of school children, Sari Sumdac streaked through the hall, and around the corner before Amalia had time to call her name.

She made eye contact with Professor Sumdac. "I'll get her. SARI!"

Amalia walked about two blocks, keeping a sharp eye out for Sari. But - as usual - she'd disappeared into thin air without so much as leaving a trace behind her. She could hear Professor Sumdac's voice echo through the corridors. He was dictating something to the students. How Amalia hated tours. They were like a thousand Saris running around causing chaos. If this kept up, by noon their screams would be echoing throughout the facility and further distract Sari from what she was supposed to be doing. Like her homework.

On cue, screams.

_Is it noon already?_ Amalia checked her watch.

Then she roughly realized that those weren't excited screams. They were kind of...terrified screams. The scientists also meandering through the corridors paused to take in the noise, not fully registering the severity of their situation.

"EVERYBODY RUN!" someone shouted.

Under normal circumstances, Amalia would have probably said something along the lines of 'No, really? _Never_ would have figured that out by myself.'

Right now though, she was a bit too busy trying not to be crushed by debris coming from the collapsing ceiling to be snarky towards Captain Obvious.

Amalia went for the old "duck and cover" method, diving out of the way just as a massive part of the ceiling crashed down where she'd been seconds before. Through the new hole, she spotted something towering above them, something she would have once applied to a monster from a horror movie. Or maybe a corny kid's television show. But whatever it was - whatever it was doing - thoughts of unwavering terror settled down on her.

Sari.

"SARI!" She exclaimed over the panicked screams and shouts as the scientists fled from the crumbling, smoking structure.

As she looked about in panic she caught sight of a familiar and unique yellow-orange dress through the smoke and throngs of workers before it disappeared around a corner.

"SARI, WAIT!"

Amalia sprinted down the hall, not really thinking about how idiotic it probably was to be running _deeper_ into a building that just received major structural damage from some giant bug monster thing. (What was that thing anyway? It reminded her of her Aunt Bertha from Kentucky.)

She swung around the corner to find that the hall branched in several directions, all of which were lined with doors that Sari could have fled into.

_Oh, come on!_

After about ten minutes of searching, it soon became obvious to Amalia that the building wasn't in immediate danger of collapsing. Although there were piles of rubble nearly everywhere; and the occasional wisp of smoke could be seen fluttering along the ceiling the rubble was mainly from poorly bolted down machines and some piping from the ceiling, while the smoke was so thin it could easily be mistaken for regular steam. The walls showed no cracks and neither did any support columns she came across.

In other words, she was now less worried about Sari running off into the depths of the factory, and more royally pissed.

_I swear I should put a damn leash on the girl!_

She shook her head to clear her thoughts. There would be time to berate Sari for her carelessness after she found the girl.

"Sari! Sari! Answer if you can hear me!"

Instead of Sari, Amalia was answered by a faint noise that the young woman could barely make out. Amalia cupped her hand around her ear as she strained to listen._ Is that… barking?_

Sure enough, the robotic menace Sari had dubbed 'Sparkplug' came sliding around the corner, running at full pelt with what Amalia recognized as Sari's key dangling from it's metallic mouth. Amalia had hated Sparkplug from the moment they'd first met, a sort of subconscious hatred of one another. And if not hatred, then Sparkplug had been programmed with a personal vendetta against Amalia. He was prone to tearing up her homework, jumping on her from above, and chewing at her pant leg until she was pretty much wearing a pair of tattered shorts. In fact, the only reason Amalia felt relieved to see Sparkplug in the middle of all this chaos was because a certain little girl was never too far behind him.

"Sparkplug, get back here!"

Amalia sighed as the red head also slid around the corner, albeit slower than the robotic canine. _And cue Sari_.

Honestly, this situation was so played out that Amalia had seen every variation of it, and she was able to perfectly time her grab for the seven year olds dress as she tried to run past her.

"Ack!" Sari exclaimed as she was quickly jerked back by the collar of her dress. When the young girl looked up to see who was holding her, a sheepish grin appeared on her face. "Oh um, hey, Amalia."

Amalia looked down so that she was making eye contact with Sari. Her face wore a relatively calm expression, but one could absolutely feel the waves of anger that rolled off of her. She remained silent for a few seconds to let Sari stew in fear (and if she kept it up at this rate, pee) before she exploded in a storm of fury. "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW BAD YOU WORRIED ME? THE BUILDINGS FALLING APART AND THERE YOU GO RUNNING OFF TO LEAVE ME HAVING A FREAKING ANEURYSUM!"

Sari cringed before opening her eyes and smiling sheepishly.

"Um, sorry?" she weakly offered as an apology. "Look, I'm sorry, okay? But Sparkplug ran off and I had to make sure he was okay!"

Amalia let go of Sari who plopped down onto the hard ground. The young woman squatted down in front of Sari, looking straight into her auburn eyes, before speaking in her best 'I only want what's best for you' voice.

"Sari, Sparkplug is a robot that can be easily repaired or replaced, unlike you. You can't go running off like that. You could have been really hurt, or worse." She placed her hands on Sari's shoulders, forcing the girl to look directly in her eyes. "Do you understand?"

Sari looked over at Sparkplug, who was sitting nearby, waiting to recommence the 'game'. "Yeah but-"

She was met with a hard stare from Amalia. She sighed and rubbed her arm in embarrassment.

"I understand, I'm sorry."

Amalia smiled and stood back up. "Alright then. Let's go find your dad, okay? He's probably worried out of his mind by now."

"Okay." She looked over at the robotic dog with a mischievous look. "But first help me corner Sparkplug."

"You want him to give you your key back? Here, I'll show you." The college student calmly walked over to Sparkplug before kneeling down and grabbing the key.

She looked back at a wowed Sari.

"See? It's that easy." Amalia tried to stand back up but found herself impeded. "What the?"

Sari snickered and pointed behind Amalia.

Amalia looked down and groaned when she saw that Sparkplug still had the string that was attached to the key firmly in his mouth, apparently still eager to play the 'game'.

Amalia let out an annoyed growl not unlike that of Sparkplug as she tugged at the string. "Sparkplug, let go."

Sparkplug responded by tugging back. Harder. Much harder than a non-robotic dog his size would be capable. Translation: Amalia was sent flying head over heals right above the robot, flipping once in the air before landing on her behind.

She moaned in pain as she slowly came to terms with what had just had occurred.

_Did Sparkplug just…?_

Well Sari was laughing uproariously, so that combined with her sore ass were indicators that, yes, that did just actually happen.

"Sparkplug!" Amalia shouted angrily at the dog as she turned around to face him.

Sparkplug was, of course, completely oblivious to the situation at hand. The robotic dog was still sitting there wagging his metallic tail happily while Sari's card still hung from his mouth as if to taunt Amalia with her defeat at the...paws, of an artificial dog.

Amalia slowly rose from the floor of the factory, a look of determination now on her face.

The babysitter turned to her charge. "We'll corner him."

"W - Wait you mean Sparkplug!" she exclaimed. "But I thought you said -!"

"I know what I said!" She shouted at the girl before staring back at the robot, "But no fake dog gets to make me look like an idiot and get away with it!"

Sari stood dumbfounded for a few seconds before smiling excitedly. The young girl quickly sprinted past her sitter in pursuit of the dog.

"Wait! Sari I said we would…" But the young girl had already run out of the room into the stairwell that led directly to the parking garage. "Oh, just forget it."

Amalia took off at a jogging pace.

She wound her way down the stairwell and into the parking garage, where she became aware of what sounded like police sirens and some screams. But no Sari. Again, she and Sparkplug had disappeared into the maze of cards. As Amalia resumed her search, she began to despise the winding and unintuitive layout of the structure. _Really, after a hundred years no one has thought up of a better way to store cars? That's what I'm ought to do when I graduate. Screw skyscrapers, the world needs an alternative to parking garages._

After several more minutes, and two more floors of cars, she finally caught up with the duo near the exit.

She found them, of course, having a tug-of-war over the key.

"Sparkplug, let go!" Sari exclaimed as she yanked on the key, but Sparkplug wasn't done playing.

Amalia was about to lecture the young girl on how she had _just_told her _not_to run away when a large truck of some sorts pulled up in front of the three and startled Sparkplug away.

What happened next, however, took Amalia of her course of thought rather violently.

"Hi little creatures! Did you two lose your ownerbot?" It spoke in a seemingly maternal tone.

_It_! As in _THE TRUCK_! As in a truck without any occupants just _talked_to them. Amalia checked to see if the driver's chair was occupied by one of the school children. Only it really was empty. The truck had talked to them.

Faced with this, the two females did what would come naturally to anyone faced with this situation.

They screamed their heads off.


	3. Chapter 3

**AN:**Wow, it's been a while huh? I really need to stop being so lazy and write more. Sorry this one's so short btw, but this felt like the right place to end the chapter. Anyway, thanks again to all you reviewers. R&R!

**Chapter 2  
Charging Up**

Although one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, Capitan Carmine Fanzone of the DPD was a man who did, in fact, love his job.

Despite the damn malfunctioning machines he dealt with on a daily basis, despite the bratty kids who loved to harass him, despite the idiotic politicians and lawyers who would love nothing more than to tie him up with red tape and ridiculous standards, _despite_ the inevitable groaning whenever he was called out to another incident or crime scene, he loved his job. He knew that every time he helped put an idiotic criminal behind bars made the city a little safer. It was doubtful that a desk job would offer the same amount of satisfaction.

But some days he really wished he had taken his mother's advice, and become an accountant. Today...was one of those days.

"All units fall back! We will engage with unmanned drones only!" Captain Fanzone ordered into the radio. _Let them take care of it, no way am I losing any of my men too...whatever the hell this thing is._

The captain sighed as several of the airborne robots fired upon the monstrosity to absolutely no effect.

It wasn't surprising to be honest; the bots were designed to take down humans non-lethally by shooting short bursts of high energy laser fire, the highest setting capable of causing second degree burns. Although this would take down just about any criminal, with the size of the monster, they might has well have been shooting BB guns at tank.

_At least the drones can act as cannon fodder until we find a way to kill this thing without it merging back together._

It was then that Fanzone noticed four out-of-place vehicles. Standing right in front of it. Typical. Some idiots thought they could be heroes, especially when they were about to let _very_ expensive police equipment get destroyed. Did they think that kind of stuff was free? Just to make sure his eyes weren't fooling him, Fanzone waited a few seconds to see if they would move before impatience took over.

"What do those cowboys think they're doin' down there?" he murmured. He picked up his radio. "You four! What part of 'fall back' do you not understand?"

He put the radio down and looked into the binoculars, cringing as the vehicles were knocked about by the gigantic tentacles. This wasn't going to look good on the report.

"Who are those guys?" Fanzone asked nobody in particular. "I want their names! I want their badges! I want thei - Hey where are the drivers?"

...Was what Amalia was more or less asking herself, in between soiling herself in abject terror. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

The vehicle (make that vehicle_**s**_, Amalia had just noticed the second, much smaller one) lurched backward as if in pain. The yellow one even _screamed_ and then proceeded to exclaim, "Those things must be armed with some kinda' high frequency sonic weapon!"

Sari proceeded to shriek again and ran off in terror, with Amalia following suit. She could worry about looking silly later.

The large green van began to pursue them. "Don't worry little creatures; I won't hurt you!"

Of course Amalia's instincts told her to _not_ trust the demonic talking vehicle, no matter how treacly his voice was.

Unfortunately for the smaller of the sprinting pair, Sari wasn't paying very much attention as she ran for what she believed was her life. Amalia gasped. She was running right for the giant monster thing. She was running _right to it!_ Even _Sari_ had to realize that that thing wasn't one of her evil little robotic pets!

"Sari!" Amalia shouted.

Amalia's warning was a tad late. Sari slammed into the tentacle and fell to the ground. The tentacle wrapped around her waist and pulled her into the air.

"Sari!" Amalia leapt dramatically and latched onto Sari's feet.

The monster took notice. It sent another one of its appendages Amalia's way, swatting her away as if she were a fly.

The tentacle hit Amalia directly in the torso. The air rushed out of her lungs. The ground moved beneath her, before she realized that she was the one who was flying. Amalia landed on her side with a 'thud', crying out in pain as her shoulder slammed against the pavement.

Amalia groaned in pain as she tried to pick herself up with the wrong arm. Dammit. Looked like her shoulder had been knocked clean out of the socket. Fortunately, from a cursory glance there seemed to be no other injuries aside from a few scratches on her arms and legs from rubbing against the asphalt, and a large bruise that was already forming where the tentacle had hit her.

She looked up at Sari, who was still screaming as she struggled to free herself from the tentacles grip.

_Oh God, what do I do? What do I do?_

However, before Amalia could finish her train of thought, her attention was torn away from Sari by a shout and vaguely mechanical noises off to her left.

What she saw rendered her speechless. The two - scratch that - _four_ sentient cars now appeared to have their panels fold and slide in multiple directions, as various parts came out in ways that Amalia was fairly certain were physically impossible.

When all was said and done, there were four large bipedal robots. Standing in the middle of the parking lot. As if this was some sort of everyday occurance. Amalia's knowledge in engineering said they shouldn't be able to even support themselves on such small legs. Heck, she'd never heard of the police using this sort of technology! It was like she was stuck in some sort of kid's cartoon! And just when Amalia figured things couldn't get any crazier, the red and blue one pulled out a giant glowing axe.

"Cool!"

Amalia looked up at Sari, who had stopped screaming and was now staring at the four robots.

_Well that's one way of putting it,_ Amalia thought._Personally I would have gone with what the fuck!_

"Autobots, ATTACK!" The red and blue one exclaimed as suddenly had a mask slid over the lower half of its face.

_Wait why does a robot need a mask?_ remarked Amalia. _Or a face for that matter?_

These questions would have to wait as the larger three of the robots commenced attacking the thing; the red and blue one with his axe, the large green one with what looked like a wrecking ball, and the skinny brown and black one with..._shurikens_?

_This is just getting silly._

Silly or not, the tentacle that was wrapped around Sari opened up as the creature was hit with a barrage of blows.

The young girl screamed as she fell while her babysitter ran desperately to catch her, regardless of her dislocated shoulder.

"Look out!" shouted a familiar voice that was coming straight at her.

Amalia looked to her left again to see that this time. The smallest, yellow robot was almost right on top of her.

To her shock, the robot did not step on her and crush her into a meaty paste, but instead reached out and caught Sari. Then it turned to run away from her and towards the parking garage, but not before looking back.

"Follow me creature!" he shouted at Amalia.

Amalia stood there, stunned silent, her brain still processing what had just occurred.

_A giant robot just kidnapped Sari._

_A giant robot just kidnapped Sari!_

_A GIANT FUCKING ROBOT JUST KIDNAPPED SARI!_

The young women broke out into a sprint towards the parking garage. "DON'T WORRY, SARI, I'M COMING!"


End file.
